Hold On
by Q.S
Summary: When James is struck with diaster he needs someone to hold onto, and Lily wants to be that someone. Warnig: cheesy ending. Contains some LM/NB. And horrible summary.


Disclaimer: DUH I do not own these people or any of the pop culture I mention in this. If I did own it, would I really be writing fanfic?

_**Prologue **_

_Lily Evans was a very smart girl. She had been her whole life and being at Hogwarts had truly shown people how smart she truly was. It didn't take long for the whole school to accept she was a genius. Not to brag, even she knew there were no girls in school close to her intelligence. Certainly, Narcissa Black was a cunning girl but she wasn't smart in the sense Lily was. As far as Lily believed the only person in the school as smart as she was would have been Remus Lupin. But the beginning of her seventh year threw Lily for a loop, one she had certainly not been expecting. _

_It had started off bad enough; she was Head Girl which was great but then she learned James Potter was Head Boy. She hated Potter. He was arrogant; he was an idiot and chaser. Unfortunately for Lily he had decided to chase her since fifth year. Even worse; Head Boy and Girl shared a dorm area. It was actually a nice dorm with a living room as the central area with two separate bedrooms off to the sides. Lily had mentally thanked Dumbledore thousands of times when she had learned that there were certain charms on both bedrooms doors so that no one could enter unless the person whose room it was wanted them to. So when Lily started her seventh year she __had assumed she would simply loc__k herself in her room most of the time and would be able to avoid James. _

_But something had happened to James over the summer. It wasn't that he had suddenly __become perfect, he was still an__ arrogant prick but Lily was seeing parts of him she never knew. She had walked into the living room area several nights to find James sitting and __reading__. At first she had assumed it was to impress her but when she pressed Lupin (who she knew wouldn't be lying) she found he read a lot. And w hat shocked her even more was that several of the books __he read Lily loved and there were also books that required intelligence to read. __More than once she had found herself getting sucked into conversations with him about books, like __Lord of the Rings__, a mutual favorite for the two. She had been __absolutely__ shocked when he forced her to read __Carrie__ by Stephan King (something she had refused to read because she had decided she hated Stephan King on principal) and found she liked it. Even more shocking was when he gave her __The Stand__ also by Stephan King and she found that it was an intelligent book exploring the reactions of people in desperation. _

_Lily shouldn't have been surprised when she released she like James. It wasn't until about the November of their seventh year, after she'd seen he had a shockingly intelligent side and wasn't a horrible person. Lily had crushes before but never like James. She not only liked him, she wanted him. She knew he had once liked her but he hadn't asked her out since school started. Most people assumed he had finally moved on but Lily had seen the light to late. And nothing James did helped her move on from him. _

**Part ****1**

Lily was sitting on her favorite armchair in the living room, reading of course. It was another book James recommended, _Salem's Lot._ It was another Stephan King book, James's favorite author. Lily knew he was at Quidditch practice and wouldn't be back to later. Had she not been so absorbed in her book she would have noticed it was pouring rain, meaning that James would be returning early.

When the door slammed open Lily jumped about a foot in the air. The book she was reading was great, but scaring her. She calmed once she saw it was James but it took her a second to realize what he looked like.

He was dripping wet, expected as it had been raining. But he looked absolutely pissed to, something Lily only saw when he fought with Lucius Malfoy. But that wasn't what caught Lily's attention. It was the fact he had no shirt on.

Lily should have assumed he'd be decent looking without a top, he was so active. But she was shocked to find that he had a goddamn six-pack. It wasn't one of those ones that were obscenely muscular either, it was absolutely perfect. And the fact he was soaked made him only look so much better. Lily couldn't help but watch beads of water drip from his (for once) flat black hair past his flashing chocolate brown eyes and down his perfect chest. She had enough self-control to stop her gaze from following the water to the waist-band of his jeans but knew her face was pink.

"Is something wrong?" she asked in a calm voice that surprised her.

"Yes!" he barked. Lily always forgot he could have a violent temper, it was legendary in the school. He had beaten up Malfoy so hard once that he'd gone to St. Mungo's. Without another word James threw his cloak and shirt on the floor and began to storm to his room. Had Lily been smarter she would have let it drop there but she followed James. It was partly a true desire to see what was wrong, partly a desire to see him without his shirt.

"James?" she called from the outside of his door. She was shocked to find it swung open easily. When she entered she found James on his floor doing push-ups with a furious expression on his face. "What happened?" she whispered. He was furiously doing push-ups and it didn't seem like he'd heard Lily for a moment.

"Fucking _Malfoy_," he spat out with absolute disgust. Lily was listening to him, but also counting how many pushups he was doing. From the time she walked in she counted to twenty, twenty-one. "He and some of the Slytherins were at the field when we got there. Malfoy started saying something and I attacked him. He fucking ripped my shirt," he added with a hollow laugh. "I wouldn't have stopped except I heard Narcissa screaming. It was pathetic, she looked so concerned and freaked out that I'd hurt goddamn Malfoy." Finishing his story James's arms collapsed. Lily had counted to eight-nine push ups, he was furiously fast. She wasn't surprised that he lay on the floor for a second to steady himself. But as quickly as he had done his push-ups he jumped upright.

"Happy?" he gasped out. He was having trouble breathing, most likely from his anger. "You heard what happened; can you leave me in peace?"

"Was that from Malfoy?" Lily asked him quietly, pointing a finger at a bruise James's fabulously formed abs. James looked down at the bruise, as if he hadn't even realized it was there.

"What?" he repeated dumbly. "Probably." Gingerly he poked the bruise and Lily felt the overwhelming desire to have her fingers be the one on his chest. Shaking that thought out her head she watched as James flopped backwards onto his bed.

"Does it hurt?" she whispered in her most delicate caring voice. She didn't mean to begin walking towards him but she found herself stopped against the foot of his bed. Before thinking she sat next to him. His reaction was automatic; he flew upright so that he was sitting next to her as opposed to lying next to her.

"What, the bruise? Trust me, I've faced a lot worse," James laughed hollowly. The anger seemed to be leaving and slowly he was becoming the James that Lily liked.

"Why the push-ups?" pressed Lily. James gave another empty laugh that Lily hated. It was so un-him that it disgusted her.

"Doc Pleasance told me to do them when I lost my temper," James explained.

"Doc Pleasance?" repeated Lily.

"My shrink. He told me to do push-ups when I feel like I'm going to punch someone. Probably didn't help I did the push-ups _after _I punched someone," James said dryly with an eye-roll.

"You have a shrink?" gasped Lily. James finally gave a real laugh, his normal barking laugh but Lily couldn't see what was so funny.

"For my temper. Got Doc Pleasance in between first and second year," he remembered. After pausing for a minute James turned to Lily with a slightly panicked expression on his face. "Please, don't tell anyone. The only people who know are Sirius, Remus and Peter."

"I promise," answered Lily automatically and she was serious. She liked knowing secrets about James that no one else knew. "Are you sure you're ok?"

"I'm fine," James assured her. "But…..thank you for uh asking."

**December**

_Lily had though__t__ things had been going well between her and James.__ That night had been when she finally realized everything she had thought about him was wrong. And she truly liked the real him. __As November had turned into December she had learned more about him. His __family, his friends, everything. Over Christmas vacation she found herself imaging what it would have been like to spend Christmas with him. Then disaster struck. _

_On December 25 at __6:36, the famous Potter ranch was attacked. Every single member of the Potter family was at their huge ranch-house for Christmas, all 63 of them. The newspapers reported that over a hundred Death Eaters must have attacked the house in order to kill so many of the Potters. The Potter family was famous for being filled with Aurors, all well trained. Lily knew that both James's father and grandfather were Aurors, and very good ones to. Of the 63 Potters that had been there, 1 of them survived; James Potter. _

_When James returned to school, a week late, he had changed drastically. He no longer joined in the antics of his fellow Marauders and began to avoid seeing them. He was rarely at meals and at classes he came in a second before it started and left as soon as dismissed. The smiles that Lily had begun to truly enjoy disappeared from his face and so did the spark in his dark brown eyes. Then, at the beginning of Feburary came something that shocked the entire school. James Potter quit the Gryffindor Quidditch team. _

_Possibly the scariest change in James's was not quitting the Quidditch team but his manner towards Lucius Malfoy. He began attacking him at random, with little to no provocation from Malfoy. Malfoy had been hurt so badly that Madame Pomfrey tried to send him to St. Mungo's but Malfoy told her he'd have to be dead to go there. Then came the final straw for Lily; Narcissa confronted her. _

**Part 2**

Lily was walking down the hall at night, less than a week after Malfoy had been brutally beaten by James. Lily had barely seen James lately; he kept himself locked in his room at all times. It hurt her far too much to see him like this but she didn't dare talk to him. She'd already heard from Remus about how James got angry whenever someone tried to talk to him lately; she didn't even know if he'd been seeing his shrink lately. But her thoughts about James were silenced as she heard voices around the corner in front of her. With skill that would have impressed the Marauders, Lily peered her head around the corner to find Narcissa Black and Lucius Malfoy in the hallway.

Lily knew Malfoy wasn't supposed to be out of the hospital yet, that must have been why he was meeting Narcissa in the hallway. Despite every attempt of Sirius to stop a cousin he liked from dating a Malfoy, the two Slytherins had been dating since beginning of sixth year. It wasn't until Lily saw them that she realized she'd had never seen them acting like a real couple.

"I don't care!" Narcissa was whispering. She looked hysterical, something Lily had never seen. Narcissa was known for being cool and aloof, nothing like this wide-eyed innocent looking girl.

"Absolutely not," hissed Lucius. He looked far worse than anyone had gossiped. His eye was swollen and he still had a bruise on his chin, along with a bandaged arm. Everyone knew that no only had he refused to go to St. Mungo's but he had refused Madam Pomfrey's attempts to heal him.

"Why?" begged Narcissa with a surprisingly heartbreaking cry. "It wouldn't be that hard, Lucius. It's only a few words, it wouldn't—"

"No!" roared Lucius. He lowered his voice as Narcissa flinched away from his anger and moved towards her. "I…can't."

"Because you're to goddamn stubborn," Narcissa whispered. She was turning her head away from Lucius as he leaned towards her, so close to her that his forehead was against hers.

"Yes," he answered with one of his famous smirks. "But it's one of the reasons you love me."

"I never said I loved you," protested Narcissa, turning her head back to look at him. As soon as she was facing him Lucius kissed her, pushing her firmly towards the wall. Lily felt horribly guilty at spying on the two on a clearly personal moment and was about to leave. That was the heavy bag of books Lily had been carrying spilt open onto the floor.

"Shit," she heard Malfoy groan. "Not now." He must have taken off back to the hospital wing because Narcissa was the only one who walked over towards Lily to help with her books. Thank God Lily was in the next hallway over so it looked like she hadn't seen anything.

"Evans?" greeted Narcissa. The two were not particular good friends or enemies like Malfoy and Potter but they still felt awkward talking. Narcissa bent down to help Lily put her books back in her bag and once again Lily felt like a fumbling clown next to Narcissa's beauty and grace.

"Hello, Black," answered Lily. "Thank you." She had prepared to leave after that, more than slightly embarrassed at having seen Narcissa with Lucius.

"Evans, I need to ask you something," rushed Narcissa suddenly, grasping Lily's arm to make sure she didn't leave.

"Is something wrong?" Lily asked, more than slightly confused.

"I'm going to be blunt," started Narcissa. "I don't have the patience to deal with this. You need to keep Potter away from Lucius."

"What makes you think I have any control over what James does?" laughed Lily nervously.

"Eventually he's going to go too far," Narcissa pleaded. "I'm scared he's going to hurt Lucius. Please, just see what he's suddenly gotten so…. I don't know," she suddenly cried. "Just try to make sure he won't hurt him again. Please," she begged. It was so uncharacteristic to hear the famous Slytherin Ice Queen beg that it made Lily nod.

"I can try," Lily muttered and Narcissa stepped back. A small smile was coming to her face as she said "thank you" before taking off down the hallway she had come from, most likely to go find Lucius again.

Lily began to go back down the halls to her dorm, replaying what Narcissa had been saying in her head. She had been right, Lily needed to talk to James. Not for Malfoy's sake, she couldn't give a damn about Malfoy. James was going to hurt himself if no one talked to him.

Lily walked into the living room of her dorm area silently. She knew James would be in his room, he always was. She bolted into her room to drop her bag off and couldn't resist taking a look at herself in the mirror to make sure she looked semi-decent. Once her brief moment of vanity was over she walked to James's door.

"James?" she called, knocking on it lightly. She was praying it would open easily, if he didn't want her there she couldn't enter. To her surprise it swung open easily and she stepped in, closing the door behind her.

"James?" she repeated in an attempt to get his attention. He was sitting on his bed, with books and papers surrounding him. It was a shocking image to see James Potter in but this was the first time Lily had been able to look at James in awhile. He looked absolutely horrible. It wasn't as if he had suddenly become hideously ugly but he did not look like the James that Lily had grown to lo—like. His hair was hanging in front of vacant eyes that seemed to scan the page of his book without seeing it. He was thin, he hadn't been seen eating for a while.

"Lily," returned James without looking at her. She walked forward so she was now leaning against the front of his bed and could see what he was doing.

"Since when do you take Runes?" she asked a she recognized some homework she had done months ago.

"Since I got back," James replied tonelessly. "I've been taking more classes. Teachers promised if got the work done by the end of the year they'd let me pass the class."

"Since when are you focusing on classes?" gasped Lily.

"If I want to get accept to Auror training early I have to take every available class," James told her without looking up.

"James, can I talk to you?" Lily asked him after she stood in silence for a moment. James shifted some books away and waved his hand for Lily to sit there. She ignored the disappointment she felt as she realized that it was on the opposite end of the bed from where he was sitting.

"Look, James……..James, look at me," she commanded suddenly. He finally looked at her, and she nearly gasped when she actually saw his eyes. They were void of any form of life, simply brown and blinking. She regretted telling him to look at her, this was going to be harder.

"James, I'm…….worried about you," she finally said.

"Why?" he snapped. "I'm fine. Absolutely perfect. Now, I have quiet a bit of homework to do, so if you wouldn't mind." With a swift jab of his head he motioned towards the door.

"James, you're not fine!" she yelled. Not thinking about what she was doing she crawled forward on his bed so that she was kneeling directly in front of him. He began to move back to get away from her but he was met by his backboard. "James, you're certainly not fine," she repeated. Now that she had said the first words it seemed all her concerns and worries were spilling forward. "You look horrible."

"I knew you never thought I was attractive," James began to joke humorlessly but Lily interrupted him.

"That's not what I mean! You've gotten far to thin, you look like you haven't slept in days and I can't remember the last time I saw a smile on your face. And your eyes," she moaned. "James, I haven't seen a spark in your eyes in months."

"Careful Lily," he cautioned with seriously tone voice. "You start going on about someone's eyes your going to start sounding like me."

"Listen to me," begged Lily. "I don't want to see you like this. Is this because of what happened to your family?""Don't mention them," James hissed. He looked away for the quickest second before bringing his eyes back to her hers.

"Your trying to become an Auror to avenge their deaths aren't you?" she whispered. It made sense now, Lily was surprised someone as smart as her hadn't seen this. "You're focusing so much on your classes so that you can become an Auror and make up for their dea—"

"ENOUGH!" he roared with a sudden ferocity.

"I can understand why you would want to become an Auror, but this is ridiculous!" pressed Lily. "You're stopped Quidditch, something that used to be your life! You're cutting off your friends, and they're all concerned."

"It's better if I don't bother them," James muttered, his anger gone in an instant. "They don't need to deal with me like this right now."

"James, they want to!" she reminded. "They're your friends, they're supposed to help you through times like these."

"What times?" demanded James.

"Your family's murders," she whispered but it was enough to send James off. With a weak cry he covered his ears with his hands, pulling himself into a small ball.

"James!" Lily yelled but he couldn't see her. His eyes were shut as tightly as possible but they flew open as Lily grabbed his hands.

"James," she repeated, ignoring the rush coming to her face as she gripped his wrists and pulled his hands away from his ears. He was shaking now and Lily did what came naturally. Releasing his hands she wrapped her arms around his chest, pulling him to her. After he realized that she was trying to help him, James lay his head gently against her. Lily tried to ignore how fast that was making her heart beat, instead trying to focus on calming him down by gently stroking his hair.

"Maybe if I had paid attention in classes more," James began to mumble. "Maybe I had learned more I would have been able to help them."

"How many Death-Eaters were there?" asked Lily in a whisper. James began to shake in her arms as the memory flooded back to him but Lily held her grip tight on him. "No matter what training you would never have been able to fight off so many. These people had no thoughts but to kill your family and nothing would have stopped that."

"You don't know that," moaned James.

"James, if you had tried to fight any more you would have been killed," Lily reasoned. James gave that hollow laugh that Lily hated as she pulled away from her. For the first time in awhile James had emotion in his eyes but it wasn't the emotion Lily wanted. His eyes were full scorn and self-loathing.

"Maybe that would have been better. I'm sure everyone would be much happier if I was dead and out of the way," he mused. With strength he had never expected of Lily she suddenly grabbed his face with both her hands, forcing him to give every bit of his attention to her.

"Never say that," she choked out. She hadn't expected the overwhelming sense of loss she felt as the very thought of James being dead. "No one would be happier with you dead. Think of what your friends would be like. Sirius, Remus, Peter they'd be absolutely miserable."

"Maybe for awhile but they'd move on," he told her in a dead-pan voice. He began to pull away from Lily again but she moved her hands from the sides of his face to the back of his neck so that he wouldn't back away.

"How can you say that?" demanded Lily angrily. "They'd be upset for life! And it's not only them, I'm sure many others would be upset."

"Name one," James ordered. In the back of her mind Lily knew that this was the perfect time to tell him that she would be miserable but she couldn't get it out. She began to stutter and no noise came out, which James took to mean she couldn't think of anyone. "See? No one would care."

"No!" shouted Lily. She had to do it, she had to tell him now. "James, I would care. I'd care…..a lot more than ever before."

"Nice to know I've made you not hate me," returned James. "Can you let me go?" Lily couldn't believe how dense he was in that second. He didn't get it. He didn't understand what she meant.

"James, that wasn't what I meant," she clarified.

"Oh, lovely. You still hate me?" he snapped back. He pulled her hands away from his neck but couldn't seem to let them go. He kept them within his own hands, gripping them very tightly.

"James, I don't hate you," assured Lily gently. "And if you died I……I…..James, I don't know what I'd do. You couldn't imagine how much that'd hurt me."

"Why?" he asked her. The anger that had seemed to build up for a minute within him disappeared as his eyes searched her for the answer. Lily couldn't believe how dumb he was being. She thought she was being more than perfectly clear that she liked him but apparently not.

"Why do you think?" Lily asked him sarcastically. "Because I like you, you fucking dumbass."

James didn't seem able to reply for a second. He only stared at Lily with this vacant blinking eyes, as if she had told him in a foreign language. As he stared at Lily she felt her heart sinking. He didn't like her. All the insults she had thrown at his face, all the times she had laughed at him, this must have been what he had felt like. To hear that the person you liked didn't like you. And what made it worse for Lily was knowing that he had once liked her but she had—

James cut her thoughts off quickly by pulling her towards him and kissing her. Unlike James it didn't take her a second to realize what was going on. As soon as she felt his cold lips against hers she pulled her hands away from his and fastened them around his neck. It was better than she had imagined it would have been. It felt so right to be kissing him, to have her arms around his neck, to have his arms around her waist. James didn't waste time with her, he had been ready for this two years ago. He was quick in pulling her down on top of him so they were lying on the bed. She began to gasp at how bold he was being but he took that chance to slide his tongue into he mouth. Lily didn't try to stop him, she encouraged him. She began to play with his tongue with her own but James had already found something more entertaining. He had pulled his mouth away from hers and was kissing her neck, her collarbone, everywhere that he could reach with her blouse still on. He was able to get down to her cleavage before the shirt became too much coverage. James began to unbutton the damn buttons but Lily pulled away from him at that.

"James," she cautioned. He didn't take notice, pulling her back towards him fiercely and working on her buttons, kissing her mouth brutally. "James!" she repeated, pulling away again. "Not now. You're still dealing with your family's deaths and we're not even going out or anything."

"Oh, you're right," he moaned. "I wish to God you weren't but, you are. Of course. I do like you, Lily. You have to know that. After all these years you have to know that I love you."

"James, you don't love me," she admonished. "Not yet."

"Fine, I like you as much as possible," James returned with a smile. It was the first time he'd smiled since Christmas. "But your right. I guess I need something to hold onto right now, and I want that to be you."

"I'll away be here for you to hold onto," promised Lily as James kissed her again.

P.S If enough people like this I might do it through Jame's view. Tell me if you would like to read that.


End file.
